GOP bad dream: Birther on ticket

California Republicans optimistic about their prospects in November could find themselves with a bit of a problem after the votes are counted in Tuesday’s primaries — a statewide ticket with the so-called “Birther Queen” as one of their candidates.

Orly Taitz is an Israeli émigré who has spent the past two years filing lawsuits challenging President Barack Obama’s right to be president on the grounds that he was born in Kenya. In the process, she has earned herself $20,000 in court fines.

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Now she’s running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state, and with her establishment-backed primary opponent mounting a less-than-stellar campaign against her, operatives say there’s a chance she could win.

“It’d be a disaster for the Republican party,” says James Lacy, a conservative GOP operative in the state. “Can you imagine if [gubernatorial candidate] Meg Whitman and [candidate for Lt. Gov.] Abel Maldonado — both of whom might have a chance to win in November — had to run with Orly Taitz as secretary of state, who would make her cockamamie issues about Obama’s birth certificate problems at the forefront of her activities?”

“There is no Republican candidate for statewide office that would be willing to have her campaign with them,” says Adam Probolsky, a spokesman for the Orange County Republican Party.

But longtime California GOP strategist Allan Hoffenblum, who publishes the California Target Book, says a Taitz victory is entirely possible. “It will be a complete embarrassment if she wins, but these things can happen,” he said.

Taitz, who was born in Moldova, immigrated to the U.S. from Israel in 1987, and is now a practicing dentist in Laguna Niguel, gained considerable media exposure for her contention, against all evidence, that Obama lied about being born in Hawaii and under the Constitution cannot be president.

Her views are so extreme that she was disinvited to an April tea party rally featuring Republican Senate candidates Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore — and both were quick to distance themselves from her, saying they did not know she had been scheduled to attend.

DeVore’s spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that DeVore “strongly disapproves of Orly Taitz and the crazy theories she continues to advance,” while a Fiorina spokeswoman said Obama is “absolutely eligible for the presidency.”